Downloading the internet to your life

In 2000, I first knew about the internet when my classmate dragged me to the internet café near our high school. We had to pay 6,000 VND (Vietnam Dong) for one hour using the computer with internet connection. In fact, a meal of sticky rice was only 1,000 VND at that time. I thought I would spend only this half an hour and would never spend such an amount of money for this anymore.

We knew nothing about surfing websites. The only thing we knew was chatting via a program called MIRC. There were many chat rooms to choose, we entered a room with a nickname and chatted with many strangers.

Although all Vietnamese newspaper said bad things about the internet as if it’s a means of modern cheating where the bad guys ruined many girls’ lives, I had an interesting chat with a kind 18-year-old IT student. I live in the South and he lives in the North, 2000 km away from each others. Everyone believed that I was a crazy fool but he became my first love two years later. Our beautiful love story lasted 6 years until my last year in university. And we are still good friends until now.

He’s the one who teach me to surf webs. And that has changed my life.

My hobby was making paper cards and I made my first attempt to learn something through the internet. I chose to learn knitting and crocheting (to make gifts for him, of course). Unlike others who learn from their grandmothers or short-term courses, I got familiar with many styles from all around the world and became the youngest admin of the handcraft community in Vietnam. I also had many foreign friends from that time. I even opened free classes about knitting and crocheting for several years.

Needless to say, my English became much better without having to go to language centers and burn a lot of money there. I joined many online forums: handcraft, backpack travelling, confluence (GPS), social work… And I never ran out of part-time jobs with all those networks. I managed everything myself and my family did not have to care about school fees or my living expenses. I even helped other student to get part-time jobs and became so popular for that in the university.

In my last year, I started to look around for a full-time job. Familiar with the internet for years, I was very confident to apply online with my well-prepared resume and even knew how to search thoroughly about the company I applied for. But I only passed some small companies that I did not really like and failed those with big companies. Then I had to spend more time online to know how to perform better in an interview. I learned so hard about all the job descriptions and recruitment process that finally I got 2 offers from professional companies. The Recruitment Assistant for a headhunt company or the Recruitment Coordinator for an IT company?

I chose to join a multi-national IT company and entered a new world of high technologies. I found it’s a little strange that all members in my HR team did not have good understanding of IT industry although they were working for it. They just knew their own tasks which required some basic computing skills only. For example, a recruiter can simply know some key words and scan the resumes for selected candidates but some of them don’t even know what those words are about. I became the IT girl in HR Team as I could understand and explain complicated terms quickly. I also had many good ideas to improve the work quality and make it more effective for the situation. I was promoted right away after one year and moved forward every year.

Thanks to the internet with all the knowledge and lessons it gave me, I’m now very happy with my work as a HRBP (Human Resources Business Partner). Not just about the job, I’m happier to be who I am now and will always keep myself updated with the flat world. It may take you 10 years to learn something in life but you may shorten it if you know how to use the internet and reach the goal in 5 years.

Making use of the internet is just like the downloading process: you go online for 5 minutes and download a material; then you can read it offline for many days and finally use that understanding anytime for the rest of your life.